OverviewI recently finished a campaign as a melee-driven pseudo-leader. We ran two years and though I had a smattering of classes mixed in I was really a melee dude. For the most part, I was a leap-attacking charger with some additional capabilities to amp damage when I needed to on top of a pretty darn resilient base. This was a no-ToB game yet I managed to maintain respectably NOT being a primary caster.

Honestly, the most stellar piece of this combo was nothing other than my cleric 1 dip. Lots of domains provide awesome capabilities that don't require loads of cleric levels to stay competitive. Sometimes they are simply a good feat ... others they are awesome class features that are nearly impossible to duplicate in other ways.

Now I'm not saying that every melee type should take a cleric 1 dip ... I am saying to consider it because it could provide some super-awesomeness you can't get easily otherwise.

The bad

BAB +0

XP penalties - if you're worried about the, fitting in another 1-level base class can be problematic

The good

Save bumps - One level dips often provide a save bump, this case to the two you want highest

Domain Granted Powers - Anything from a good feat to abilities you can't easily get otherwise are available

Devotion Feats (instead of domains)

Spells - I'm tracking these differently than the domain granted powers. You can dip with a WIS of 4 and get the granted powers, but if you want to cast spells some domains have some nice ones (like Truth with detect thoughts as a 1st level spell ...)

Turn Undead - A cleric level can open the door to divine feats, many of which are pretty good and scale well with CHARACTER level

Magic item use - wands, schema, whatever are now open with no UMD check required

KeyGood items are marked in blue - these are pretty solid for the dipModerate items are marked in black - these are situationally good and useful more often than notPoor items are marked in red - not generally a good choice but could be niche-useful

Domain Granted PowersCaster level bonuses are rarely good as the dip is costing you a caster level to take. Key are things that give you all the power up-front with no need to scale.[spoiler="Domain Granted Powers]SRD

Meditation - effectively Sudden Empower ... be better if it was actually the feat though ...

Necromancer - caster level increase

Passion - rage, but sadly cleric level dependent duration

Shadow - Blind Fight!

Weather - In a weather dependent game the skill bonus, vision clarity and others would be handy.

Faiths of Eberron

Revered Ancestor - EWP Valenar Scimitar feat!

Warforged - bonus turning attempts

Races of Eberron

Transformation - caster level increase

Truth - Sense motive bonus & caster level increase

[/spoiler]

Devotion FeatsThere aren't really many stinker devotion feats as they all scale with character level and not cleric level, plus you can get more uses out of them by burning turn/rebuke undead attempts. I tend to value offense more than defense and "options" more than either. They also tend to activate as swift actions which means it doesn't typically detract from your normal operations ... and typically last a minute, plenty of time to be useful.

When I mark something red here, it doesn't mean it sucks. It means it is has limited use compared to other devotion feats. Some have constant usefulness.[spoiler="Devotion Feats]

Air - AC bonus (sacred/profane) and projectiles have a miss chance.

Animal - You can decide to get a sacred strength bonus or FLY. Or increase land speed or gain a poisonous bite attack. Did I mention a sacred bonus to strength or FLIGHT?

Chaos - Unpredictable, could add to AC or attack. At 15th this could be a +10 AC or +9 to hit ... and as unpredictable as it is, it doesn't suck.

Death - Hand out negative levels for a minutel Cap though preventing you from screwing BBEGs. Only really works on henchmen.

Destruction - Weakens armor making your opponent easier to hit over time. Best when combined with someone or something that hits A LOT so you can debuff for your team (like a Glaivelock maybe?)

Luck - Never do less than half damage on the roll. I'm not sure on this one. You'd need to be rolling big dice (like d12s or d20s) before I got really excited about it.

Magic - caps at 10d6 damage and you only get ONE for the feat. Stinker.

Plant - Scaling fortification and it is an immediate action, meaning you can react and put it up (if you aren't flat-footed).

Protection - AC bonus to yourself and others. It's alright, but I value numeric offense more than numeric defense like this.

Strength - Bypass hardness for one minute, all attacks are treated as adamantium ... and you get a slam attack. Dude, there are two devotion feats that give you extra natural attacks.

Sun - Extra damage against undead. Situational, but if you're in Ravenloft or another undead heavy game, this goes blue fast.

Travel - Can I make this any bluer? It's like pounce, but not a charge. Your full movement as a swift action for one minute. This is awesome for skirmishers or people that can't otherwise get pounce easily (say you're Lawful ...)

Trickery - This one is a bit strange and I think folks are still trying to figure out a way to really exploit it. It isn't horrible, but not my first choice. It does strike me as one of those gimmicks you can ride through many non-combat, scouting, etc. situations in addition to its potential combat use. *** See Sinfire Titan's post below about the usefulness of this devotion.

Divine FeatsDivine feats. Yar. Of special note is the Elemental Healing feat that states it is different from other divine feats in that it can ONLY be powered by elemental turn/rebuke and not undead or other turn/rebuke attempts. This seems to indicate that, unless otherwise very specific you can use other turn/rebuke to power various feats even though that feat may require you to have turn-undead prior to taking it. This would prevent a Favored Soul who grabs contemplative and snags the Plant domain from taking most divine feat, as it can turn plants but it can't turn undead which is typically the pre-req.

So, feat may require turn/rebuke undead but if it says "spend a turn/rebuke attempt" you can use any kind of turning. If it says "spend rebuke elementals", that's the only thing you can use to power it.[spoiler="Divine Feats]Complete Divine

Sacred Purification - requires turn undead, Sacred Healing - heal living in radius and simultaneously harm undead. Be nice if it counted as conjuration(healing) so the Sacred Healing feat would boost that ... but it doesn't.

Sacred Vitality - requires turn undead - spend turn attempt to get immunity to ablity drain/damage and energy drain for a minute. This one is great given the prevalance of shivering-touches, rays-of-suckitude, etc. flying around.

Dragon Magic

Dragonfire Channeling - requires cha 11 + dragonblood + turn/rebuke undead OR elementals - spend a turn/rebuke undead OR elemental to do a blast of flame, but it sadly scales by cleric level. So sad.

[/spoiler]

Cleric Class Features / SubstitutionsEven for a dip, there are some class features that have significant payoff.[spoiler="Alternate Class Features / Subs]

Spontaneous Divine Casters from UA / SRD. You don't get a lot of spells ... this gives you less choices, but you don't have to prepare and you can do widgets.

Positive Healing: If you're gonna dip cleric, you probably gonna do it for the devotion feats/granted powers, not the spells the domain gives. So anyway, this heals 10 hp per turn attempt, not that hot.

Rebuke Dragons: are you kidding me ?

Spontaneous Domain Casting: Now there's something useful. I am sure that you are better off with a utility 1st level domain spell than you are with cure light wounds. If you can't do the UA variant, this one isn't bad either.

True Daylight: You are not going to be able to cast daylight.

[/spoiler]

SpellsSince you've got that level as long as you've got a Wisdom of 11 or higher you can cast spells. Some are very useful.[spoiler="Standard Spells][/spoiler]

Depending on the domain you choose, you might have other options too. One a day isn't bad, but if you've taken one of the spontaneous-domain options (or UA spontaneous caster) you can get plenty of mileage out of 1st level utility spells.[spoiler="Domain Spells][/spoiler]

ChristopherGloves seems to have abandoned this list, so here's some more on spells and then the war domain! (My apologies if making everything bold makes it difficult to read...)

Domain SpellsHere's a list of the 1st level spells for each domain for those with a Wis of 11 or more. I'll avoid rating any except the most exceptional spells here. The main question in my mind is generally whether a domain power and 1-3 uses of a 1st level spell is worth as much as a devotion feat.

Original post:It's been a week since this was posted, so I'll assume it's safe to post by now ^^;;

This is a good guide, no 2 ways about it.

To add some stuff, Ordained Champion is a solid PrC that you can take at 5th level as a 1-level dip to synergize with the cleric dip before heading into your PrC of choice. If you only took a domain for the spells (or have a bonus domain like Knowledge from Cloistered Cleric), you can trade up to 2 domain powers for fighter bonus feats, thus making a single level of cleric worth 4 levels of fighter class features on top of spell-casting and turn undead. For example, a Cloistered Cleric 1/Crusader 3/Ordained Champion 1/Ruby Knight Vindicator 10/Crusader +5 (CL 8, IL 19) makes very effective use of a 1-level cleric dip (though it requires house-ruling the different deities for PrCs involved).

Another trick I've used is to get the Baator domain coupled with a warlock or dragonfire adept and the darkness feats from Drow of the Underdark.

Cloistered Cleric as a 1-level dip also grants Identify as a divine spell, removing the 100g material component. Not too shabby for games that keep track of that kind of thing! Cloistered Cleric is also great as a 1st level pick because of the high skill points it grants.

The Destiny domain from Races of Destiny is also good to look at. The domain power is a 1/day reroll for someone explicitly other than yourself as an immediate action, and the 1st level spell is Omen of Peril, I think.

Nice handbook. I'm giving this a try for the first time with a character for Bowen's upcoming (Eberron) Red Hand of Doom game. It is hard to resist going for a full-blown divine gish instead of only dipping cleric, though.

At first I was going to exchange all of my domains for devotion feats (Animal, Earth, and Knowledge), but then I decided to head towards Master of Nine as a PrC later, and the prereqs are so brutal that I took Darkness and Time for the bonus feats, instead, and then wound up dumping charisma and not having the skill points for Knowledge Devotion.

I thought the Earth Devotion feat sounded particularly fun for a battlefield control tank, as being able to throw up rough terrain as an immediate action to stop enemies from charging my allies could come in very handy. And of course being able to cast Fly as a swift action (Animal Domain) is awesome, as are free bonuses to attack and damage (Knowledge Devotion).

One dip that I used in an actual game was for a swift hunter build: a level of cloistered cleric for travel devotion (THE feat for swift hunters), the turn attempts to burn on travel devotion, the time domain, and knowledge devotion (ups the dmg of arrows a bit). Celerity domain would also have been good.